


Up on Sugar Mountain

by likeadeuce



Series: Faith/Wesley road trip series [5]
Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-14
Updated: 2010-02-14
Packaged: 2017-10-07 06:40:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/62442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likeadeuce/pseuds/likeadeuce





	Up on Sugar Mountain

After he got Wesley's postcard, Gunn just stared for a while, flipping it over in his hand, because Wes was right: It was nothing he didn't know. _I've seen Fred. She's well. Happy in her new life. Radiant as ever. And oh yes: She loves you._

Yes, he knew. She had said it, the night she left. He wasn't ready. This job, this firm, gave him something he had never had. It was a way to fight the fight, by other means, and everything that they had put in his brain now, he couldn't leave it behind.

He turned the card and read it again. Only Wesley, he thought with a smile, could be out there riding around the country, having lots of sex with a hot superhero, and make it sound like some kind of noble sacrifice was involved. Wesley, he thought. . .riding around with Faith. . .staking vamps, axing demons. He looked down at the half-drafted writ of mandamus in his hand.

Two minutes later, he stood in Angel's office, coughed, shuffled his feet, and wasn't he supposed to be the hotshot new lawyer now, talk anybody into anything? And yet. . _If you could spare me . . .just a little time off until. . ._

Angel didn't look up, just drummed his fingers on the table. "Ten little Indians, and then there were none." And Gunn felt like shit, until Angel raised his eyes, and there was something like a smile there. "Don't sweat it, Gunn, I'm sure Spike will never leave me." Finally, the smile traveled to Angel's mouth. "Tell Fred 'hey' for me."

*

Mapquest said it was fifteen hours to Boulder, Colorado. (He knew the route by heart; he didn't have to look again; he'd never been there, but he'd dreamed every mile of it, every night in the months since Fred left). Gunn made it in twelve. He left L.A. after eleven at night, headed north on the 15, sped through Barstow and past Vegas at night – preferring to pretend it didn't exist, despite the evidence of light pollution. The next nine hours were just name-checks from the map – Redlands, Cedar City, Cisco, Rifle – he'd never been this far east, but he might as not well have been, for all he saw of it. Until the sun rose as his truck sputtered into the Colorado mountains, and it was a good truck, the first thing he had sprung for with his new money. But it felt like unnecessary bulk, powering up these hills, not to mention what gas cost and by the cold light of day (and it was cold, when he put the windows down, even with the sun up, even though it was hardly November) –

By the very very cold light of this November day, Charles Gunn started to feel like he might have made a mistake.

But he'd come this far, so went a little further, and he pulled in front of the townhouse, and he remembered it was the middle of the day. She didn't know he was coming; she could be in class, or at work, or somewhere with friends, with someone else, and why shouldn't she be? Wasn't it as insulting as hell of him, just to show up here without notice, expect she'd be free?

Gunn wasn't sure he'd have the nerve to knock.

He didn't have to.

Fred raced out the door, tackled him in a bear hug, arms around his shoulder, legs around his waist, and before he could sputter out, "Angel says 'hey'" her hands cradled his neck, and her lips touched his mouth. He gave back the kiss, touched her face, her hair, her back, and she was his Fred and they were kissing on the sidewalk in the middle of the day, in front of a townhouse in Boulder, Colorado.

"So," he gasped, when he finally decided to breathe. "Do you want to show me your new place?"

Fred's hair tickled his shoulder, her lips brushed his ear, and she whispered, "I want to show you my new bed."

*

They had made love on a mattress stacked on crates in his old apartment, the squeaky old beds in the Hyperion – in her room, in empty ones; in Angel's room, even, while he was under the ocean and they didn't know, as though someone this would help them discover him, at the very least channel the aura of an absent leader. They had made love in Gunn's truck, countless times; on his kitchen table, on his couch, in the research stacks at the UCLA library. Once in the leaves on the side of the trail, hiking up to the Hollywood sign, and only once – despite what the office gossip insisted on repeating – after dark, over the desk in a third floor conference room at Wolfram &amp; Hart.

But this time, there was a king-sized bed truly fit for royalty, a deep wide heavy framed captain's bed, covered with a thick blue-plaid comforter – a Cockburn tartan, not a promising name, Gunn realized, then wondered how the hell he knew what it was called; maybe it had some connection to Gilbert and Sullivan. . .then he stopped wondering, because Fred was on the side of the bed, hitching her skirt around her legs, a loose pink skirt with yellow butterflies. "Come here, Charles." Her underwear was cotton, the elastic coming off; she slipped the panties off, and giggled, holding them up with a finger through the tattered waistband. "I wasn't exactly expecting to show them to anybody, didn't get ready for company."

She dropped them onto the bed. Gunn smiled, and moved to his knees thinking _That's my Fred, walking around in a pink skirt and old underwear, for nobody in particular._ He pressed his lips to the inside of one thigh. Her muscles tensed, she breathed in. He moved in closer, and hair scratched his cheek; she hadn't had time to get that part ready for company either, and he remembered the first time he'd seen her naked – perfectly groomed, perfectly dressed for the ballet. They hadn't slept together that night – he'd been stabbed, after all, even this tough body could only take so much – but Fred giggled that she wanted him to see her naked, that she had spent all day planning to be with him tonight, and she'd even danced around her room for him, humming the music to Giselle, while he lay back in the bed and laughed.

Now, as she settled back on her hands, he tasted, and the sharp salty bite reminded him of that night, and so many other times when they hadn't bothered to look good for each other at all, had only wanted, touched, and taken.

"Oh, Charles, God. . ." One of her hands moved forward, and the fingers ran smoothly over his scalp. He felt the tremor in her leg, and then she breathed in, a sharp gasp that was almost a laugh, and he knew what that meant; he touched her knee, and she said,

"Yes," because she knew that, too, and it was good to be with someone like this, to require so few words. He rose to his feet, and she lay back in the bed. He moved to undo his belt, to drop the suit pants that he would have slept in, if he had stopped to sleep, and Fred pulled the blouse over her head, stretching up her arms to emphasize up the points of her sharp small breasts. "This bed," she said, "is just about exactly the right height for what I want you to do."

"You thought of that," he smiled, "When you shopped for it."

"You bet I did," she said solemnly, then melted into another laugh.

Gunn's dress shirt still hung down past his waist, and he moved to take it off, but Fred shook her head. "I like that on you; come here." He leaned closer, so that the tails of his shirt brushed her legs; she reached out her hand to take his cock and, as he stood in front of her, slipped it inside or, it almost seemed, slipped herself around it. He leaned forward and, thrusting into her, braced a hand against each of her slight hips. She had been close to climax when he took his mouth from her; now she moved slowly and he could see the focus in her eyes, wanting to slow everything down, to stretch out the moment. But he ran a hand up the curve of her side and soothed. "It's all right, baby, you go, you –" She needed no further urging; her body shuddered around him, even as she let out the quiet breathless laugh that always signaled her fulfillment; in a moment, Charles followed.

"That was nice," she breathed, at last.

"More than nice, I'd say." Gunn bent down to kiss her, but she only puckered her lips and pecked him.

Sliding away, she rolled onto the mattress and pulled aside the comforter. Fred slid underneath the blankets, reached down to shimmy out of her skirt, then lay on her side and raised an eyebrow at him. "What are you waiting for?" She slapped the sheets beside her. "I invite you in."

Gunn slid into the bed, and pulled her against him. This time they shared a long kiss, and when they were finished, she snuggled into him. "So, mister," she whispered, lips pushed almost into his chest. "How long you gonna stay?"

"That depends," came Gunn's murmured reply, "How long have you got?"


End file.
